Improving Intelligence

The unexpected raid last week on the Baghdad home and office of Ahmad Chalabi is the latest evidence of failures of U.S. intelligence gathering efforts before and during the ongoing war in Iraq. Mr. Chalabi, long living in exile, was a favorite of the neo-conservatives in the Pentagon and he and his associates were the sources of many claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction program; claims that made their way into speeches by the president and vice president to justify the war, but have since proved to be untrue.

The Chalabi incident is further evidence that the U.S. intelligence system needs to be overhauled, according to Sen. Olympia Snowe, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “We need to redesign the system for the security concerns of the 21st century,” the senator said this week. To do this, the senator offered the good suggestion of creating a director of intelligence position. This person would be responsible for coordinating the intelligence gathering of the 15 agencies now involved in that process.

Having such a position, perhaps, could have avoided the miscommunication and turf battles that caused information about terrorist activity before Sept. 11 to be bungled. Better coordination may have shown that Mr. Chalabi and his cohorts were fabricating stories about Saddam’s weapons capabilities. Instead, top officials in the Pentagon supported the assertions from Mr. Chalabi and his colleagues and used them to bolster the case for war. Now, Mr. Chalabi is being investigated for passing highly classified information to the government of Iran, which has much to gain from the demise of Saddam Hussein.

Sen. Snowe is also right that Congress must “demand full accountability and be fully informed.” Asked if Congress, which authorized the war in Iraq, is being kept adequately informed about events there, the senator offered an emphatic “No.” This is a damning conclusion coming from a Republican senator serving on the committee that should know the most about the ins and outs of the war.

Getting information from administration officials “has not been a willing process,” Sen. Snowe added. She said she was certain there had been other times when it was as difficult to get information from the White House and government agencies, but she couldn’t recall a specific instance.

The latest example of a department not being forthcoming is the Defense Department’s apparent withholding of portions of a damaging report about the prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee were recently assured by Gen. Antonio Taguba that they had a complete copy of his 6,000- page report. However, as committee staff members were compiling the documents, which were not numbered and include 106 addenda, they decided to compare the stack to a ream of 6,000 blank pages. By their estimation, 2,000 pages are missing from the Taguba report.

A Pentagon spokesman said that if pages are missing it is an oversight. There is also suspicion that the report, which cited numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses” at the prison, was classified as “secret” to protect the Pentagon from embarrassment, not to protect military secrets.

Recent events in Baghdad and Washington highlight the dysfunction of U.S. intelligence gathering operations and the lengths to which officials will go to keep damaging information hidden. Reform is clearly needed and Sen. Snowe’s suggestions are on target. More information, more accountability and more communication can only improve the situation.